Former CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham says the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can regulate almost everything — with the narrow exceptions of "onions and box office receipts."

Pham, who served as acting chair of the derivatives regulator, made the remark while discussing the breadth of the agency's statutory authority over commodities and derivatives markets. Her comment underscores a long-running jurisdictional argument at the center of US crypto policy: whether most digital assets fall under the CFTC's commodity mandate rather than the SEC's securities framework.

How broad is the CFTC's mandate?

The quip about onions and box office receipts refers to specific carve-outs Congress has written into commodity law over decades. Everything else traded as a commodity — including, in the CFTC's view, Bitcoin and Ether — sits within the agency's purview when it comes to futures, swaps and fraud enforcement in spot markets.

Pham's framing carries practical weight for crypto firms. If digital assets are commodities, then exchanges, brokers and clearing operations serving US customers face CFTC registration and compliance obligations rather than SEC disclosure regimes. That distinction determines capital requirements, market surveillance duties and which agency brings enforcement cases.

Why the jurisdictional question matters now

The SEC and CFTC have spent years contesting turf over token markets. The SEC has asserted that most crypto assets are investment contracts; the CFTC has repeatedly labeled Bitcoin and Ether commodities in its own enforcement filings.

Congressional proposals to give the CFTC explicit spot-market authority over digital commodities have circulated in multiple sessions without becoming law. Pham's comments add a senior-regulator voice to the argument that existing statutes already cover most of the terrain.

For market structure, the stakes are operational: a CFTC-led regime would push crypto trading venues toward derivatives-style oversight — registration, reporting and surveillance — while an SEC-led regime would emphasize issuer disclosure and securities listing rules.

The jurisdictional question remains unresolved in Congress and the courts, and pending market-structure legislation will determine which agency ultimately supervises spot token trading in the United States.